That explanation contains no qualifications about platform, no restrictions about content, and no disclaimers about age or gender. Radio is what each generation makes it, as long as it continues to make that connection.

…Today we have become mostly apathetic to the homogenized, assembly-line, hub and spoke nature of commercial radio. With it’s over-researched playlists, excruciatingly predictable “talent”, and lacking any true intimate connection, it is no wonder the industry lost the youth.

College Radio can still help change that, help save Radio.

In order to do that, College Radio programs have to change, or rather, adapt. They need to remember the powerful place they holds for the future of the industry. College radio was (and can be again) the first and last laboratory for relevant content, the R&D for what content needs to become in a 21st century convergent media landscape. Programs should expand and reorganize to be the incubators for the future airwaves.

…College Radio has the opportunity to combine the media platforms that the youth have adopted (or created), with the content and culture that speaks to them and adapt the medium (radio) into something new, vibrant and relevant, in a safe and creative environment. College Radio is where the youth can find their voice and invent a new road map for their era of Radio.

…I contend we already changed radio, for us, back in our decade, whatever decade that may be. We do not have the ability to change it for the youth, because we are no longer the youth.

Our charge, our challenge now, is to support them, guide them, open them up to the possibilities, expose them to how it has been done in the past and give them the opportunity to change it, break it, rebuild it with new parts and pieces…and then get the hell out of their way and trust in them to do it their way in the future.”

—

I couldn’t have said it better myself: We need to give our students the “voice” the commenter refers to. We need to hand them the keys to WNHU: to “change it, break it, rebuild it with new parts and pieces”.